


Bright Ideas

by ceiland



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Pining Keith (Voltron), Slow Burn, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-08-31 19:33:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8590924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceiland/pseuds/ceiland
Summary: After a mission meant to be routine goes awry, Keith and the Red Lion crash-land on an ice planet in the rim of an obscure solar system. Except—Lance, in the course of risking his life to save Keith's, winds up stranded on the surface with him. Comms down and Lions out of order, together, they've got to avoid extraterrestrial weather conditions, Galra patrols, and the tension that happens when you're on a time limit to confess your feelings.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ya boy samuel's back at it slinging fresh hot garbage into the void. remember how i said i was working on something long? well. something long is here
> 
> i'll tell you upfront the gay starts in chapter three. a good portion of this, i admit, is borne of my love for overthinking and over-researching scenarios. i researched so much about g-forces for this fic you don't even know. i was tempted not to even post this because i've had just that many anxiety attacks over it, while writing it, after writing it, so on so forth, but—it's nineteen thousand words (not even for nanowrimo!) and i'm not just going to waste that
> 
> [2/20/17] edited this for dialogue spacing and took out one line that may have been jossed by season 2 (which i haven't watched yet)

Even before he opens his eyes he hears the alarms sounding off in the cockpit, the noise digging like needles into his skull.

Keith wonders, briefly, dazed, if he could just—make this situation go _away_ , if he ignores it. Keeps his eyes clenched shut and stays slumped back in... there's alarms sounding, this is his Lion, he's in his pilot seat. It would be very convenient if he could just sit here in his seat and let this take care of itself. He comes to a little more, though, senses sharpening into a hazy almost-focus. The alarms keep screeching.

He opens his eyes. Unfortunately, things are still happening. Words flash urgently in Altean on the cockpit interfaces. It's not like he can read ten thousand-year-old dialects of alien languages, but if he had to guess, he'd figure they say things like 'congratulations, idiot, you crashed!' and 'guess who screwed up!' ....Paraphrased.

Crashed—they'd been on a mission before this. Keith rubs his eye with one hand, taking a deep breath. His lungs ache, distantly, but they're only one of many other aching things, and they really should get back in line. The mission; it wasn't a _routine_ thing, but it wasn't exactly a matter of earth-shattering importance, either. The Castle had brought them to the edge of an out-of-the-way solar system. Small planets orbiting a yellow star—their focus had been on the fifth planet from the center, or rather, its largest moon. Recent observed information gleaned from Pidge and Hunk's frighteningly-rapid decryption of local low-security Galra communications revealed an intelligence center situated on the moon's surface. He doesn't know why he didn't think of that—logistically, of course the Galra would need outposts like these to maintain comms. Empires on continents can fall apart due to being unable to manage the size, let alone empires spread across _galaxies_.

He sits up—feels pain shoot through his back and neck. It has him _very_ concerned for a moment before he remembers that that's just sort of a thing that happens with the levels of G-forces that must have come from _falling_ into the planet's atmosphere. The alarms are still splitting his eardrums.

"Red," he manages, scowling. "Can you turn those _off_."

The alarms shut off. Silence sinks into the cockpit. Something unsettling about it—there's Red's presence in the background like a pulse, but there's something hollow about the quiet, something implicitly threatening. No comms, he realizes, and lead settles in his gut. The mission failed. He should be hearing his teammates hollering right about now. Either his comms are down, or.... Fear rises in his chest to creep like ice through his veins.

"Are the comms online?" Please—he's never _hoped_ for a technical malfunction before, but it'd be better than facing the alternative of silence by any other cause. There's a moment that goes on for far too long before Red gives a response: _no_. Tension immediately sinks out of his shoulders. Okay. So there's still a chance there's someone out there left to get through to him. Red sounds wound-up, something tight in her response. It's easier to notice these things when communicating telepathically. He's crashed... somewhere, trillions and trillions of miles away from Earth, telepathically communicating with a robot space lion. Keith almost wants to laugh, a little hysteric, mostly stunned.

The mission objective had been to take out the Galra intelligence outpost. The fine details (as plotted by Allura and Shiro, working in tangent poring over a map of the solar system) were that Pidge would use Green's stealth upgrades to focus on the destruction of fine equipment. Hunk would manage the demolition of the structure itself (the Yellow Lion is the sturdiest—most suited for heavy hitting) and double as backup for the more fragile Green Lion, which would likely end up as the focus point of Galra retaliation. Keith, Lance, and Shiro would stay away from the moon's surface and handle the reinforcements.

Reinforcements—that's where the plan fell apart. They had expected resistance. Nobody exactly _likes_ having their toys broken. But they hadn't expected the better part of a _fleet_ , as it'd seemed—decelerating into view out of nowhere. The Castle, from its position of security at the edge of the solar system, had been quickly put at risk. All paladins had rushed back to assist.

Keith checks his armor over for damage. There's none; he hadn't been jostled around the cockpit like he'd almost expected, the G-forces of the plunge through the planet's atmosphere keeping him pinned in his seat. That's about the only good thing they did for him—he hasn't fallen unconscious from G-forces since his earliest days at the Garrison (and _everybody_ in his class blacked out their first time in that centrifuge, he might add).

 _Why_ had he been crashing, though? All these memories are hazy—he has trouble remembering what he was doing before he falls asleep sometimes, and that doesn't even involve space battles or oxygen deprivation. It comes back all at once, though, and his heart beats like a hammer in his chest. Lance— _dammit_ , damn him, damn both of them.

Keith had had it under control. Red had been hit _hard_ , stalling, but he'd been able to use his remaining velocity to aim back. He could have shot back. He could have—until the Galra ships started charging their weapons again. And Lance, of course (Keith bites his lip), of course he had decided to push the Red Lion out of the way. Sending him on a trajectory towards the planet at the furthest edge of the solar system while taking the hit. Keith slams his fist down on his thigh, taking another deep breath.

You wouldn't expect, at first, for Lance to be the selfless type. But Lance, as _typical_ as he acts, has always tended towards the unexpected. Keith had never much cared for the unexpected, before now.

"Give me a readout on this planet's atmosphere," he says, trying to look over Red for any damage (he doesn't have to look very hard). He needs to get off wherever he's landed. Not entirely sure where he's going to go—he hasn't exactly gotten any updates from the Castle, or even any of the other paladins. Red takes a second before giving him the answer to his question. Enough oxygen to breathe, but only barely. Negligible percentages of nitrogen. Okay. Good. He can take his helmet off, if necessary. Keith isn't going to question why an outer rim planet in the gravity of a yellow star has a semi-hospitable atmosphere. "Are you _sure_ you can't establish communications with anybody else?" Red gives him a response that loosely translates into words along the lines of _I'm not a miracleworker._ Keith isn't sure what he expected. "I know, Red—can you fly?" He already knows the answer. If Red could fly, she would have gotten them both out of the way of that shot _before_ Lance had to play hero. He's getting a reflection of his own nerves—his own need to _do something_ —from Red. She gives him back a _no._ "What systems _aren't_ down?" he mutters.

 _The lights_ , Red tells him, and he doesn't miss the pettiness. Keith is really not sure why he hasn't gotten used to the universe batting him around like a cat with a mouse it doesn't quite want to kill yet. Great. Yeah, no, fine, this is normal. He's sitting here in a wreck getting telepathically sassed by a robot lion, and also all his friends are possibly dead. _Lance_ is probably dead, and somehow that stings the hardest—the idea of it being because of him is almost more than he can bear. A notion of futility wells up in his chest, until his connection with Red flares up. Her presence in the back of his mind is burning hot, something laid bare—he can feel her determination just as harshly as he can his own. _The Blue Lion could be nearby_ , she tells him. The statement notably does not include any guarantee towards Lance's status. A memory that is not his own flicks through his mind of _falling_. Both Lions had descended into the atmosphere at almost the same time. Keith sits up. "Why didn't you say that _earlier?_ "

Red notes that she's been a little busy having the majority of her systems offline, thank you kindly—which is a completely fair reason, of course, but not enough to keep him from suddenly wanting to leap out and start searching. Keith stares, exhausted, at the view from outside the cockpit. There isn't much of one; dusty white, mixed with upheaved dirt. Snow, then. Unsurprising. He wouldn't be able to make it far on foot before having to turn back, but he's caught between that and sitting here rotting.

\---

Okay. No. Sitting and rotting? Definitely almost starting to sound like the better option. Downright vacation compared to tromping about in the snow like this. There's barely even sunlight—he walks partway by just the light coming off his suit. The sky, where it isn't obscured by the clouds or the fog lingering low above the ground, is a dim, threatening orange tinge. There are a few streaks of light tracked across, and he wonders if they might have something to do with the battle—the wreckage from the Galra ships might be entering the atmosphere.

There's no sight of the Blue Lion. There's no sight of much anything else, either, between the low visibility and the flat expanse of snow. His suit keeps out the worst of it, but it's still enough to seep into his bones, mingling with cold dread in his chest. Something about the vastness of the area surrounding him, the freezing chill, the sheer _isolation_ drives in the enormity of everything. Even if the Blue Lion is here, that's no guarantee that Lance will be alright. And even if he is—then what? They're going to be stuck on this planet with no communications and, possibly, nowhere to go back to.

Keith thinks, not for the first time and not for the last, that his entire life might just be a car-crash course set towards the fact of being alone.

The first real lead he finds is heavy bits of dark metal shrapnel glinting up from where they've crashed into the snow—bits of the Galra ships, then, but there's not much recognizable beyond that, metal twisted out of shape. It's not so far away from Red, but he's been walking slow, and it comes at around the time he was thinking of turning around. But now—he's always worked on feeling, because there's never been much else going for him, and finding this he _knows_ that he's going to find Blue, for better or worse.

And he does. In an oblong clearing of melted snow and tumbled rock, paint chipped and visibly damaged. Relief courses airy through his veins even as logic dictates that this is a _really bad sign,_ and that he might not like what he finds in there. Even with the cold, alien air harsh in his lungs, he sprints as fast as he can towards Blue.

Smoke rises up from several points. She seems to recognize him but doesn't move. "Blue," Keith breathes. "You've got to let me in." He _needs_ to get to Lance. The surroundings fall out of focus.

A moment of churning silence, before Blue opens up to let him in. He rushes into the cockpit and—

Lance is slumped over across the floor, spilled out of his seat. Keith slows down, trying to focus on something besides _panic_ , heart beating harsh enough to echo in his ears. Nothing _seems_ wrong, but then, Keith isn't exactly the medical expert. None of them are medical experts. They're all _teenagers_. He drops to kneel by Lance's side. Ice in his veins, he takes the armor off one hand, stripping away his glove, and presses it to the side of Lance's neck to check his pulse.

Lance shrieks.

"Oh my _god_ , dude, what the _hell_ —ice hands!" Rushing to sit up, which turns out to be a mistake, because he goes suddenly dizzy, enough that Keith finds himself automatically putting his hand on Lance's shoulder to keep him steady. Keith isn't entirely sure what he expected.

" _That's_ what you're concerned about? You—" Keith remembers himself, and pulls his hand away. Starts putting his armor's glove back on. His heart still pounds doubletime crashing behind his ribs. He feels a little breathless. "We crashed," he says, voice leveling out.

Lance takes a long look around the cockpit. Something lost flickers in his gaze. "No shit," he deadpans. "No, wait! Lots of shit! We're up shit creek without a paddle, is where we are!"

"Actually, we're on an ice planet." Same difference, really. "The one on the outer edge of the solar system. Do you remember what happened?" Keith starts checking for damages to Blue as Lance reorients himself, although he finds himself reluctant to look away from Lance. Funny thing, that, when you just spent a good hour or so expecting to find someone dead. Relief tugs the tension off his shoulders, melts some of the cold fear in his blood.

Lance rubs his eyes. "Uh, yeah. Lots of suck. So much suck that the planet sucked us in and now we're about to reach critical mass suck."

"Supercritical," Keith mutters, picking up a metal panel and sliding it back into place. That's about the only easy repair there is. He can't feel anything from Blue, for obvious reasons, but he's hoping she's not doing _too_ badly. Lance squints.

"Excuse you?"

"Critical would imply the level of suck is staying the same." Keith spares another glance back at Lance, before quickly looking back at the interior damage to the cockpit. "Supercritical means the level of suck is constantly increasing as part of the suck chain reaction."

There's a pause. "My god," Lance says, too theatrical for someone who just nearly _died_. "He does have a sense of humor!"

"Don't get used to it."

Silence settles in. Lance looks over the interfaces, out the cockpit view, coming to all the same conclusions as Keith did earlier. Something changes in his face. "Have you heard anything from the others?"

Keith is usually the one getting the bad news. It doesn't feel much better to have to be the bearer of it. "No. Comms are down on my end—ask Blue if she can make a connection." Another pause. Lance shakes his head. "She says no. Nothing."

A shaky laugh, something almost hysterical to its lilt. "Guess I don't know what I expected."

"We can head back to Red," Keith says, feeling something in his chest drop at the sound. Lance shouldn't even technically _be_ here. He wouldn't have to be, if not for... whatever _that_ was, whatever he did. If he didn't dive in front of that shot, he would have been able to regroup with the others. One loss, maybe, instead of two. It'd be easier to justify the loss of one paladin rather than two—the Castle could have fled to safety sooner, less reluctantly. "Red's more intact than Blue. I can work on repairs for her and bring her back over here, work from there."

"Helps that she's got fire powers." Lance checks his armor for damages. Keith wonders if regaining consciousness always looks so generic. "Can't imagine that the whole ice thing Blue's got will be much help." Beat. "No offense, Blue." It _is_ rather reassuring to have Red's literal firepower on their side. At least they probably won't die of hypothermia. Keith brushes a dusting of snow off his armor.

"It's cold outside—"

" _Really?_ I would never have guessed."

"—so _try_ not to die," Keith finishes, voice taking an exhausted edge to it. Lance stands up. Still shaky on his feet, but Keith rules him safe for walking after one more glance over.

"What? I'm an _expert_ in not dying. I've never once died in my entire life." They start heading out of the cockpit. The cold is biting, but it's easier to put to the back of his mind, now.

"You nearly died back when the stuff with the crystal happened," Keith points out. This is _really_ not the time for bickering, or whatever this is, but—in a weird way, he thinks it might be helping. Something normal, something _Lance_. Although, those are two categories that rarely intersect.

Lance glares at him. "But I _didn't_. I have an unbroken streak of not dying! I'm going for the world record."

Keith takes a deep breath. "I think the Alteans have you beat on that one."

"Coran already knows he's welcome to fight me any day of my life."

"What about Allura?"

Lance stops at the bottom of the ramp. "Dude." He squints. "I'd die, like, twice. Both because she could kill me and because—holy shit, you've seen her, I'd _thank_ her if she killed me." Keith goes to continue walking, vaguely annoyed, but Lance's hand on his shoulder stops him. "Hold up."

He is acutely aware of Lance's hand. The wind is strong out here, prickling, picking up snow and tossing it around, but the helmets block most of it out. Something changes in what he can see of Lance's face through the condensation-covered visor of his helmet. Lance steps over to Blue's paw and puts his hand down. There's tenderness to the motion that Keith hardly ever sees (but has been catching more and more, lately, learning what to look for). "Hey, Blue. We're gonna get you out of here, okay?"

The air is heavy with a tension he can't place. He doesn't feel any of what transpires along the bond, but he's close enough to his own Lion that he understands the nature of a moment like this. After a while that lingers in the quiet, Lance turns away, a rare trace of reluctance slipping onto his face. "Guess we should head back to Red?"

Keith feels almost like he's intruding. He doubts Lance cares for the idea of leaving Blue here alone, but then, it's not as if they have much of a choice. If anything comes by (the leftovers of the Galra fleet come to mind), they're all mincemeat, anyways. "We can follow my footprints back. Count our supplies and try and think of something to get us all off this planet. You ready?"

"As I'll ever be," Lance says, sparing one more look at Blue.

\---

It's cold. It's very cold. It's very, really, _incredibly_ cold. Keith apparently couldn't derive this from the normal means, so Lance has so kindly decided to fill him in on every _miniscule_ detail. He's been subjected to this battery of complaints the whole way thus far.

"You know," Lance begins, and already Keith is starting to question his own rapidness in rescuing him, "I wanna know why we never land on _fun_ planets. Why can't we get stranded, in, like, a beach town planet where the aliens give us unlimited free food in exchange for an easy rescue mission? Whatever the space equivalent is of cotton candy. We can't be the only people to have invented it, we're not _that_ smart. And waterslides. What I could go for right now is—"

"Snow can be a waterslide, if you slip hard enough." Keith is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Lance took that shot for him—got himself stranded on this planet for him. It stands to reason that, Lance being _Lance_ , he'd bring something like that up. As it stands, the fact lingers as a tension in the background Keith wonders if only he can feel. Lance seems relatively unaffected by the whole _stranded to die on an alien planet_ thing, aside from the expression that sneaks in sometimes when he thinks Keith isn't looking.

Lance looks around at the measureless expanse of snow swallowing them both in all directions. "Dude. Don't give me ideas."

Giving Lance ideas is the _worst_ possible notion. Keith doesn't respond. "Man. Keith. Dude. Betcha I could turn this place into some kind of ice park if we weren't busy out here dying and freezing. Like the ones they've got in… some part of Europe, I don't know."

"If you haven't noticed, we _are_ busy out here dying," Keith snaps. "I don't care about European ice parks. I'm trying to figure out how to get us out of here alive." He feels bad the moment it comes out of his mouth, taking the crack of anger with it, but he's learned to live with the sinking feeling of dealing with consequence after an impulse. His whole time in the desert after dropping out of the Garrison felt like an extension of that sinking feeling—how dare he be _happy_ for once, and all that. Getting stranded here is just another case of that; he's been _enjoying_ his time as a paladin, even despite the stresses. The other shoe had to drop sometime. The other shoe always drops, and it usually steps on him.

Lance doesn't even bother keeping up the nonchalance. He scowls instead, something setting rigid in his posture. "Oh, yeah, god _forbid_ I try to be an optimist."

That nearly stops Keith in his tracks. He furrows his brow. "You? An optimist? Lance, last week you complained for thirty minutes because the food goo machine was backed up." The heat sinks out of his voice.

Lance scrunches up his face. "Dude. We were gonna die of starvation because of that thing."

Keith takes a very deep breath. "What, and we aren't now?"

"Well, maybe, but we'll die _cool!"_

"We're on an ice planet, if we died hot I'd be pretty stunned," Keith says, and almost regrets the pun more than snapping earlier. Lance is rubbing off on him in possibly the most annoying sort of way. Lance laughs in such a way it makes Keith's chest ache, and he wonders for a second if they couldn't just harness that power to warm up this planet.

"Are you kidding? I don't know about you, but I know _I'll_ die hot! I'm _living_ hot!" He strikes a pose and nearly trips in the snow. Keith finds himself looking away, something in his face flushing. The cold, probably.

The landscape around them would be beautiful, maybe, if he was seeing it in (say) a magazine picture, and not in person. National Geographic would _shit_ over this place. Now that he's not focused solely on getting to Blue, stuck in a sort of tunnel vision, he can see the hints of mountains (maybe glaciers?) through the fog framing what he can see of the horizon. The clouds have settled in more, a flat orange-backed gray sky trailing above them. Keith hopes it doesn't snow, but knows it probably will.

"Dude. Do you remember that episode of Spongebob? We're like Spongebob and Squidward. Krusty Krab pizza, is the pizza—" Keith thwacks Lance on the back of the head.

He feels Red's frustration in increasing amounts as they get closer. It mimics his own—he's always preferred the ability to _do_ something. Playing tug-of-war with the universe for control of his own life. Keith was never really surprised at Red's exclusive taste in paladins. He relaxes some, insofar as he can out here, when Red comes into view. They may not be out of danger, but they'll be out of the cold. Red, impatient, opens up for them immediately.

"I mean, if we're both staying in here, it'll basically just be like Hell's sleepover," Lance says, the first words in a while.

Keith stamps his feet on the bottom of the ramp. "Hell would be warmer."

"Hell's evil ice queen cousin—"

"Watch it! You're tracking snow into my Lion!"

Lance glares at him. "You don't exactly have a _doormat_."

The ramp closes behind him. It feels warmer already, like standing close to a furnace, and he's grateful to be back inside. Red's presence presses warm at the back of his mind as well—she's fickle, but she knows when she's needed. Keith takes off his helmet, setting it aside. "Take off your armor if it's damp."

"We'll just freeze faster if we wear less."

"Are you always this contrary?"

Lance snorts. "You? Calling _me_ contrary? That's rich." Bait. He is being baited. Call him a fish, then, because he's _always_ going to fall for it. He can't just let Lance get the last word.

"Why?" A sharp edge to it. Keith is just glad to be inside. They can start counting out their supplies—they're lucky that Coran always seems to prep them for even the most unlikely situations. Lance's hair is ruffled up as he pulls his helmet off.

"You disobeyed an order from Shiro about fleeing to the Castle. You dropped out of the Garrison. Yesterday you were willing to fistfight me over the concept of canned cheese."

"Dude. Only elitists don't like Easy Cheese. And the Garrison would have kicked me out anyways, eventually." He's not going to answer that first one. Keith starts heading to the back of the Lion, where supplies are kept, but stays within hearing range.

Lance rolls his eyes. "Oh. Great, no, yeah. Do you have an answer for disobeying an order, canned cheese heathen?"

"We were overwhelmed—"

"That's why you should have gone straight back to the Castle, like Shiro _told_ you!"

"—and they were tailing me. I would have led them right back to the Castle. I was trying to hold off the ones right behind me so I could get away without bringing any back, okay?" Keith hates using the word 'flee'. He sorts through the rations stock, pointedly avoiding looking back at Lance.

A pause settles in. "Dude. You're an asshole," Lance says, sounding a little... stunned?

Keith snorts. "So I've been told." He counts the rations supply three times, almost slipping up on the numbers once or twice when his mind drifts towards the situation.

"Who told you you were an asshole?" Lance sounds genuinely shocked at the prospect of anybody else but him calling Keith an asshole. "I'll fight them." Is... is Lance _aware_ of how bizarre he is? It agitated Keith at first, when all this began, when they were all new to being paladins, but now it's begun to grow on him. He wholly blames Lance for this fact.

"You told me. Many times now."

"Well, I was right," Lance says, " _anybody else_ is wrong." Keith wonders what the unspoken thought here is. He's only ever been able to read these things at face value.

"Regardless of my status as an asshole," Keith says, dropping a rectangle-packed ration in front of Lance, "we've got enough rations to last for a week if we eat two a day. Two weeks, if we eat one a day. Not counting whatever Coran stocked on Blue. There's ten gallons of water, but. You know, I don't think we're going to have a problem with that on an _ice planet_."

"We could totally just eat snow. The universe's lamest snowcones." Lance picks up the ration by the corner of it and stares at the Altean lettering. It looks enough like an MRE that it probably tastes just as bad.

Keith shakes his head, sitting down nearby with his own rations. "Can't eat snow. It just dehydrates you more, makes you colder, and do you really want to eat unpurified alien dirt snow?"

Lance scrunches up his face. "Fair point. What are we going to do, boil it?"

"Melt it. The stockpile included iodine for purification."

"Aren't we fancy." The rations in Lance's box turn out to be... something. They're definitely _something_. Lance sticks his tongue out. "You know what? I think I'm gonna be okay with only eating one of these a day. God, I thought the stuff the Garrison served was gnarly."

It tastes no worse than food goo, really. Keith stretches his legs out, leaning against a wall, feeling something quiet and leaden settle in his chest. Now that the initial rush of crashing here and finding Lance is over, with nothing left to do but to sit here and wait for some grand idea or rescue, he finds himself having to deal with the reality of _being_ here. It's not a very fun one. And there's still guilt clawing at him about getting Lance trapped here too. Lance makes a face at every bite of the ration, brow furrowing, nose crinkling. Keith finds himself looking over for a second too long and quickly shifts his focus to his food.

Feelings, too, are collaborating with the universe to make his life suck. Figures the guy for whom Keith caught _emotions_ is the one that got stuck on a inhospitable planet on the edge of a solar system with him in the process of (dare he think it) saving his life.

"Man, I wonder what the Garrison even thinks happened to us. We kind of just—left? Right as that stuff happened. What do you even tell families, when that happens?" A vague hand gesture. "'Oh, yeah, your kid just went missing and we can't find them. No reason. We were the last ones who saw 'em, though.' I'm sure that won't cause a massive fuss." Some of the air of nonchalance is fading, and something in Lance's eyes isn't quite there. Still a spark to them, but there's a heady trace of distance.

"I'm sure they'll find a way to slap ' _pilot error_ ' on it," Keith mutters. "It's the excuse they used last time."

Lance snorts. "God, that's so messed up, though, isn't it? They didn't even _try_ and search."

"You're telling _me._ " Shiro had been his only tie to—well, anything, really. First time he'd ever properly gotten close to anybody. The time between the Kerberos mission and Shiro coming back to Earth was one of the worst parts of his life. "I wonder if they did, and just figured we wouldn't like what they found."

"Reckon those conspiracy theory people are right?" Lance waves a spoon in a circle as if the motion is going to clarify anything. Keith looks right up as Lance continues. "Not talking, like, the 'I fucked Mothman and now he's my lawfully-wedded husband' types you see in the tabloids, but like, y'know. The real types."

This is a subject that Keith, perhaps embarrassingly, understands. "Well, I mean, we all know about Area 51."

"Bro. Dude." Lance squints. "Dude. Bro. _Area 51 is a real place._ "

"Exactly!" Of all the things to be talking about, out here like this—it makes something warm seep into his chest. Talking with Lance, when he isn't being a menace to society, is surprisingly nice.

Lance looks at him as though he's seeing him for the first time. "Holy shit. You're actually a nerd, aren't you?"

And Keith's out of his element again. Knowing how to navigate a social situation was fun while it lasted. "You could have asked Shiro, he would have told you that."

Lance shakes his head. "Nah, man, like—I dunno, you just seem so."

"So?"

"So, like... aloof. Bad boy type. Too cool for school."

Keith is pretty sure that if he laughs he'll somehow offend Lance, but this. _This_ is so incomprehensible it's funny. "I wouldn't say 'too cool for school'. If I had wanted to be there, I would have gone."

"See!" Lance waves a hand in front of his face. "Like that! God, did you even notice the number of girls talking about you?"

He's not about to take any information regarding women as fact, coming from Lance. "I've got some real bad news for them, in that case."

"Good god. The instructors were pretty impressed, though. Not about the girls, I mean about you. Some of them even seemed to miss you."

"I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Iverson isn't included in that statement."

"So shocking, right?" Lance pokes at the rations with his spoon. "Guess what I'm trying to say is. You seem so cool, right? And here you are stuck with me, talking about conspiracy theories. You know what? I bet you think you fucked Mothman."

"Mothman is my boyfriend," Keith deadpans, although he can't keep a smile from sneaking in and tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"I support our local gay cryptids," Lance says, not even bothering to hide a grin. The rations don't seem to taste so bad any more.

\---

The rest of dinner (can it be called dinner when you're eating it on the floor while in a survival situation?) passes easy. The fleeting distance has long since left Lance's eyes by the time they're tossing their empty ration packs into the snow outside.

"Wow. Humans really _do_ wreck shit wherever they go. We're leaving trash on an obscure planet in the middle of nowhere. Can you _imagine_ how much we're confusing any poor space archaeologists that come this way?"

"For their sake, I hope nobody has to come here." Keith smirks. "Maybe they'll make conspiracy theories about it."

Lance cracks up. It's a good sound. Once he realized that it was never really _at_ him (okay, maybe near the beginning), Keith started maybe even liking it. He glances away. "We're going to have to work on repairs," he continues. "If the Castle's still out there, we don't have a way of calling and asking for a pickup. We can try and repair comms, or we can try and get ourselves off the ground." He doesn't exactly like being the one that has to keep them on track, but he's been running his brain threadbare this whole time lingering on the situation at hand.

"They're probably looking for us," Lance says, hands falling to where his pockets would be if he wasn't still in his armor.

"We don't know if they even escaped the fleet safely." That's not a thought Keith likes to linger on. "We have to assume the worst."

"I thought I told you I was converting to optimism lately?" The end of it is a little ragged.

Keith takes a deep breath. "You picked a hell of a time."

"My streak of excellent timing had to end eventually." Lance looks away. "Hey. If it counts, I don't think they're gone. Maybe a little worse for wear, but I just—it feels like we'd _feel_ it, y'know?"

Keith knows. He's always run on intuition, feeling like a reactor fueled by instinct and anger, cooled by results. He'd felt the same certainty of survival back after the Kerberos mission news broke. He wonders if Pidge feels it too. "I get you. But I feel like if we plan on an uncertainty, we're setting ourselves up for disappointment."

"And what are we supposed to do if they're _not_ fine?" Lance snaps. Something in his voice is off. So much for being in a good mood after dinner. "What would even be the point of getting off this planet, then? Oh, yeah, look at us, taking down Zarkon with two half broke-down Lions and no Castle. They _have_ to be fine. I'm sure they fled in time to escape the fleet."

"Which means they're not even in this system to rescue us." Keith turns away to try and see what can be done with Red in terms of repairs. "Meaning, we need to get our comms up, or manage to fly somewhere where we can. Do you think Blue's comms are salvageable? Mine are shot."

"Maybe." He does the thing where he forgets his armor doesn't have pockets again. "God. I wish Pidge or Hunk were here. Neither of us are exactly... tech geniuses."

"It's bad enough you're here," Keith mutters, kneeling by a spot of damage he _might_ be able to not destroy further.

Lance goes unexpectedly silent—when Keith looks back questioning, there's annoyance on his face. "Do you _really_ hate us that much?"

"What!" Keith squints. "What? No! I meant that if anybody should be stuck in Santa's fucking nightmare factory it should be the guy who caused the mess in the first place."

Lance looks taken aback. Like he was so sure that Keith had meant whatever he'd been assuming. _God_ , Keith wishes he was better at these things—he's never been good in social situations. Sometimes he'll listen in on people and while the individual _words_ have meaning, he can never quite follow the thread of conversation. Something about Lance, though, makes any kind of thread get tangled up in his head. So often Keith accidentally ends up offending people—too blunt, maybe, or not there enough. He doesn't even really know what he _did_ to make Lance think they were, whatever, _rivals_ or something. Keith would like to make that right before they die on this godforsaken planet.

"I don't hate you, you know," he continues. "I don't hate _any_ of you. I—"

 _Should really get back to work,_ Red reminds him, impatient in the back of his mind. He exhales deeply. "Just. I don't know. Words suck." He wonders when Lance is going to bring up the part where he saved Keith's life. He thinks about bringing it up himself, but (perhaps selfishly) decides against it.

Lance's shoulders sink, relaxing, before falling into his normal stance. A small smile creeps up—not one of his usual ones. This one, Keith is convinced, is real. "Here," he says, crouching down next to where Keith is trying to work. "Can I help?"

Wow. Keith's shocked that worked. He keeps his eyes fixed on the work at hand, a sneaking thought that if he looks over at Lance he'll find himself having trouble looking away. "Yeah. Can you see if there's any kind of toolbox in here? I need a set of channel locks."

"Sure thing." Lance goes over to where the rations are and starts rifling around. Keith wonders how much of a mess is being made back there. "Uh... what are the channel locks, again? All tools look the same. You've got pointy things, turny things, the highlighter-color things with bubbles in them, and smacky things."

"Turny thing with the blue handles that flips around a lot." Keith is glad that human and Altean tools share at least _some_ basic concepts. Some, at least. Other things in the Castle supply closets he's pretty sure he could put his eye out if he presses the wrong button. Lance presents him with the channel locks and returns to his position.

"Man. It'd be so useful if people could talk telepathically like us with our Lions. Or Allura and her mice, or whatever."

Keith can't argue that. If he could talk to people like he can to Red, maybe he could understand more of what the hell people are talking about once in awhile. "I wouldn't people creeping around in my brain."

"We do those training exercises," Lance says, watching as Keith works with what's behind a piece of jolted paneling. "With the tacky helmets."

"Yeah, but those you put on. And I can't say I like that, either. Would you want people creeping around in _your_ brain?" Keith tightens something, wondering how much of a fucking miracle it'd be if that loose piece was the lone cause of their comms malfunctioning.

Lance shakes his head. "Guess not. It'd be pretty cool to be able to waltz into a crush's mind and see what they think of you, though."

Keith blinks. "Lance, I just don't think Allura's all that into you." Plus, like, she'd probably suplex Lance if he tried to telepathize all over her.

Lance sputters. "Who said I meant Allura?"

"Basic knowledge and consideration of the situation." Red's getting a little annoyed about having to be worked on like this. He apologizes to her without speaking aloud. "I've got no idea where to start on this," he admits.

"Maybe I could try Blue?" Lance says. "She took a harder hit than Red, but maybe her comms are stronger." He scrambles to his feet, grabbing his helmet and heading for the door. Before Keith can even say not to head out alone, the exit is opening—

—and a blizzard is raging outside, thick snow swept sideways in white winds. Keith can feel the blast of freezing air from where he's situated across the room. Lance _immediately_ shuts the door.

"Okay! Not going out in that, no sir! My ass is too good to freeze off!" Lance pops his helmet off, eyes wide. "How about we wait for the morning on that! No thanks!"

"Good idea," Keith says, looking back to the repairwork. "Hey. Maybe you can figure out how we're going to sleep in here. Last I checked, our Lions didn't have bedroom suites. And sleeping on the floor, I'll admit, doesn't sound fun."

"Ah, yes, let me just materialize some air mattresses out of my asshole." Lance folds his arms, scanning the room. Keith wonders how much progress they'd have made by now if he'd gotten stuck with, say, Shiro.

"Huh. I always knew you were full of air."

"My own brilliant wit, turned against me. Oh no. Whatever shall I do." Lance goes back to where the rations are. "Yeah, no, I have nowhere near enough energy to make that sound sincere. I was thinking you could take the chair? Since it's your Lion and all."

"Blue took the harder hit," Keith says, giving up on the repairs. "And I know G-loc isn't a party." G-force induced loss of consciousness is just about the furthest possible thing from a party. As a pilot, the idea of falling unconscious in midair scares him more than almost anything else. A tangible kind of loss of control. Plus it makes your back and neck hurt, which is the real problem here. Keith sets the channel locks aside. He's beginning to regret all the classes he skipped before he dropped out. One of them might have had something useful to get them _out_ of here in one piece. He doesn't even remember which ones he had, really—all that is ages away, and he's always had a tendency to split his life into Befores and Afters.

Lance shakes his head. "Nah, man. I can't just sit in _your seat._ Besides. With how tense you always are? Your back probably has, like, nine bazillion knots. One day your muscles are going to throw a prison riot and just shank you."

"Wow. You are really concerned about my back." At least if his muscles shanked him he wouldn't be stuck on this planet another day. "No, really. Speaking of G-loc. I found you on the floor of your cockpit. Are you sure you're alright?"

"Don't talk _back_ to me, young man," Lance says, picking up a ration pack and squeezing it with both hands. Keith hopes he isn't thinking of what he's probably almost definitely thinking of. "Yeah, no, I'm fine. Just some bruising, but that always happens with this stuff." A pause. "How d'you think bruising affects frostbite?"

"Try not to find out," Keith groans. "Look. If neither of us are gonna take the chair, then how about we both sleep on the floor. Deal?"

Lance looks between Keith and the chair. There's a lingering moment of consideration before Lance sits down in it and leans back—

—a burst of distaste comes from Red through the back of Keith's mind. He grimaces. "I. Uh. Don't think Red likes that."

Lance hops right back out of the seat. "Fine. Didn't wanna sit there anyways, Kitkat," he mutters, speaking in the general direction of the wall. He sits down, stretching his legs out, before laying the ration pack under his head like a pillow. "This thing withstood ten thousand years at the Castle. I'm sure it can withstand my head."

" _Kitkat_ ," Keith says, incredulously, because of all the crap Lance just said that's what stuck with him the most. If he called Red Kitkat he'd probably get locked out for _days_. " _Kitkat?"_

"Yeah, dude." Lance crosses his ankles, folding his arms above his head. Keith didn't exactly intend for them to sleep _right now_ , but if he's honest with himself, they might get more done if they sleep on it. "I miss Kitkats," Lance continues. "Even if Pidge refused to ever eat them right and always ate the whole block at once while looking me in the eye. Some kind of fourteen-year-old territorial custom, probably."

Why is Keith not surprised in the slightest. "Licorice allsorts," he says, sinking back into his pilot's seat. He starts undoing the armor on his hands. Sleeping in armor isn't going to be the most comfortable thing, but he's used to sleeping in clothes. He lets himself spin idly in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. Meaning he doesn't catch Lance staring a hole in him.

"Really, dude? _Licorice?_ Licorice is, like, a scourge upon the Earth. It's candy made by heartless people who have never even seen candy in their lives. It's made with the tears of children and the little baby ducks who get caught in oil spills in dishsoap commercials." Lance waves a hand in the air above him. " _Candy corn_ is where it's at."

Oh, he's on. "If by 'it', you mean the taste of sugar that someone tried to reconstitute as asphalt, then yeah, sure." Keith closes his eyes. Tries to find some comfort, some reprieve from this situation in the background purr of Red, and another petty not-quite-argument with Lance. They've come far from the days of _actual_ arguing, he likes to think. "Starbursts."

"First sensible thing you've said all day. But only all the ones but the yellow ones."

"Lance, what? The lemon ones are the best." He doesn't bother opening his eyes.

"Finally! We've found someone to dump those things on! Me, Pidge and Hunk all _hate_ them."

"More for me." Lance's voice can be calming, in a way. Sometimes he hears it and it makes something _leap_ in his chest. Other times, right now, it makes something simmer. Either feels like a fire. "Nerds?"

" _You_ can't eat Nerds without being a cannibal. The green candy apple ones are the best, though." "...They make green Nerds?" "Well, yeah. We have Pidge, don't we?"

Keith actually laughs. Not much—barely more than air through his nose. It's surprising, heavy with fear as his head's been since he came to. Being here with Lance, selfish as it is, does something to quell the burn of anxiety in his chest. The conversation continues on like this for a while, before simmering out. Lance's voice starts trailing off more and more as both of them get closer to sleeping (or, rather, attempting to sleep—Keith knows he himself has a hard enough time sleeping on the _Castle_ , where impending threat to life and limb is a little bit further away than just outside the Lion's cockpit). Silence settles in the space between words, and Keith watches the ceiling, assuming Lance has fallen asleep.

"Do you think we'll ever get back to Earth?" Lance's voice startles him, and he blinks. The lights are dimmer, now, and he appreciates Red's propriety. The question weighs heavy in the air, making something clench in Keith's ribcage. He doesn't think any answer he can give will be reassuring. It's not as often that he thinks about going back—Earth never seemed to hold much for him. Keith exhales slowly. "I've got to do my best to get us off this planet in one piece, before that."

There's no response after that. Keith falls asleep eventually, with the uneasiness of the situation and—something else, something harder to identify, tense in the back of his mind.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shit hits the fan, even more so than the first time. posting this earlier than planned because i have to dm a d&d session tonight and i really don't want to accidentally fuck up the schedule of my first ever multi-chapter fic

Keith wakes up with a jolt. There's something tugging at his hand, and a burst of cold air hits him from one direction. He sits up, eyes wide, staring first down at his hand. "Lance?"

"Dude. Come on. You've got to see this. Wake up." Lance has his hand in Keith's, trying to pull him up out of the seat. "Get up." If the air's this cold, the outside access must be open—nothing Lance is willing to wake him up for can be good. Keith wakes up fast, jumping to his feet, reaching for where his bayard would be with the hand that isn't in Lance's.

"You don't need your bayard," Lance says, and he sounds almost... _excited?_

Keith looks blearily across the cockpit. "What? What's—"

"Just follow me!" Lance pulls him by the hand down the ramp and points up at the sky. Suddenly, Keith understands the urgency in waking him up.

Since last night, the snow on the ground has been replenished. The crater of where Red crashed is concealed by clean white snowbanks. The looming fog of last night is long gone. But that's not the focus—Keith cranes his neck up to stare wide-eyed at the now-clear skies. Little sunlight, almost a kind of twilight. The sky above is streaked bright colors, flitting greens and reds, gossamer ribbons twisting. Behind that the profile of the galaxy is spilled, with countless stars just twinkling past what light there is. The light from all these things comes down and glints, prismatic, off jagged ice structures spiked up out of the ground that neither of them were able to see last night. Scintillating across the snow. It turns what had been a foggy hellscape into something breathtaking and bold, full of colors.

"We must be near one of the poles," Lance says, and he's grinning. Absolutely genuine. "That's—dude, that's straight up the aurora borealis!"

Keith finally tears his eyes away from the area around them and glances at Lance's face. There's wonder there, gleeful, and both of them have forgotten where they are. Aurora light catches in Lance's eyes. Breath sticks in Keith's throat, his heart jumping, feeling warm enough to ignore the cold around them. Suddenly his knees don't feel strong enough to support him.

Realization comes easy. Something he'd already known, but had shoved out of his mind, time and time again. He really is in too deep with this boy, isn't he? Of all the guys Keith had to like, it had to be _Lance._ Mentally he curses—he has the _worst timing._ All the more reason to try harder to get them off this planet. Keith swears that he's going to say something, before they die out here. If they live through this, he doesn't want to have to stamp it to the back of his thoughts any more. He wants an answer—even though Lance is sure to reject him, it'd be better than not knowing.

"Those icicles are like _prisms!_ I didn't think ice could do that!" Lance goes to point at one of the stalagmites rising up from the snow-covered ground, but finds his hand still laced with Keith's. Both of them become acutely aware of this fact at the same time. Keith pulls his hand away before anything can be said, looking very closely at one of the prisms to avoid eye contact. His skin burns where Lance's touch was. Lance looks down at where their hands were, before glancing away.

"I don't think ice _can_ do that. Are we sure we want to try and drink the water here?" Twenty gallons of water spread between Red and Blue's stockpiles is enough to last them for at least ten days. If they're here for more than that, they probably wouldn't be going anywhere anyways. Keith rubs his hands together. His bare hands—left parts of his armor in the Lion—"Lance. We need to put our helmets back on. It's _way_ too cold out here."

"I want to stay out here for a bit," Lance says. "I haven't seen that much snow. And I was going to head out to Blue anyways."

"Not without your helmet." Call him worried, but he's not about to have Lance turn into a human popsicle on his watch. Keith trudges through the snow and up the ramp back into Red, grabbing both their helmets and starting to put back on his gloves.

Red purrs in the back of his mind. Transmits a feeling akin to _glad you stopped lying to yourself._ He nearly chokes. She _knew?_ An affirmative. Of course she knew. The Lions all have to link minds with their Paladins. Keith tries not to find the idea a little embarrassing. "Yeah, well, keep it to yourself, alright?" he mutters, heading back out. He tosses Lance's helmet over. "Put that on."

"Ugh," Lance says, but complies. "Snow's kind of pretty. I'm surprised."

"Good thing you like it. We're going to be stuck here for a while." Keith looks around, keeping his back to Red. He doesn't like the idea of being exposed out here like this. It's not likely that this planet is inhabited, at least thinking of Earth standards for life, but then, plenty of things that've happened lately weren't very likely. Best to be on the lookout. He can see Blue easily in the distance, now that there's not fog or a blizzard rolling in. He's stunned at how short the walk really is, when it had felt so long crossing it last night.

"Wow. Have you ever lightened up in your entire life?"

"No."

Lance turns around after shooting him a glare, doing something with the snow at his feet. Keith focuses on trying to survey the area. They seem to be in a valley, with glaciers on either side. The light refracts in the spots that aren't covered in snow, casting prism-glint flickering over the area. There's a few cracks in the smooth edges of the glaciers at their level, some of them large enough that they could be construed as holes of which he can't see the end. Keith doesn't like how low the visibility got last night, that neither of them noticed any of this. He's about to say something about the cracks in the glaciers when something smacks into the back of his head.

Keith is spinning on his heel and reaching for his bayard when he hears Lance _laughing_. "God, Keith," he says, suddenly possessed of a shit-eating grin, "haven't you ever been in a snowball fight before?"

He hasn't. "Have _you?_ " Now is _really_ not the time.

Lance shrugs. "Nah. But I saw it in a movie once, which pretty much counts. Right?" He balls up another handful of snow, and Keith has to veer to the side to dodge it.

"Would you knock it _off_?"

"Knock that weird look off your face," Lance says, diving to make another snowball. Keith frowns.

"That's just my face!"

"So you admit to your face being weird?"

"What! No—" A snowball hits square on Keith's visor. That's _it_. He points across from him at nothing in particular, dusting the snow off his visor. "Lance. I'm serious. Look over there."

"What?" Lance turns around. Keith's snowball hits him in the back right between the shoulderblades. He yelps. "God, you fight dirty! It's just like your sparring!"

Keith folds his arms. "Can we focus, please?"

"Not a chance, man! You returned fire! I'm going to have at least _one_ snowball fight before I die, dude, you can't take this from me. It's not like we're doing anything, anyways. If we're going to be here then I'm not going to waste the last while of my life pretending like we can repair our Lions."

"What happened to converting to optimism?" And for that matter, trying to get to Blue to see if her comms are more intact.

Lance snorts. "Yeah, well, turns out that's a bit harder when you can't get to sleep at night."

Keith lets the words sink in, thinking them over, watching the light from the auroras above them and ice around them dance across the snow. Lance looks—not vulnerable, maybe, but bitter. "You didn't sleep last night?" He figures it's probably been night the entire time they've been here—this planet is far from the sun, and judging by the sky above, they're on one of the poles.

Lance brushes a dusting of snow off one shoulder. "Not well. But let's see what you can do when you're sleeping on a metal floor with an Altean food... square thing, as a pillow."

Keith wonders when he started letting himself worry this much about other people. "Race you to Blue," he says finally, the corner of his lip turning up, knowing that Lance has started to rub off on him in ways he can't explain. "If you want to have a snowball fight on the way, well—whatever happens, happens."

Lance perks up immediately. "Deal. You're on."

The armor keeps the snow from actually feeling cold, but Lance has a good throw, and the impacts still register. As they're running, Keith gets a hit in that skids across Lance's visor, and he can hear him laughing. Between that, the radiant panorama above them, and the breathlessness of racing headlong to the Blue Lion, Keith finds he's almost having _fun_. He stumbles over something in the snow, tripping and falling onto his back, but the goofy face Lance makes as he doubles back to loom over him has him almost laughing, a breathy sound. "The great Keith Kogane," Lance says, scooping an armful of snow up and creeping forward, "felled by a bunch of snow."

Keith scrambles back, grinning, trying to kick a flurry of snow into Lance's face. "I lived in the desert for a year, what do you want!"

"It's barely worse than sand, you loser!"

Lance is about to drop the armful of snow onto Keith when an echoing _boom_ sounds somewhere in the sky above them. Like something breaking the sound barrier. The sound reverberates in the walls of the valley, foreboding, sending cold trepidation creeping into their bones. Both of them look at each other, any trace of prior fun replaced with dread. Keith climbs to his feet. The armful of snow falls forgotten to the ground.

"Are we sure that wasn't just an avalanche somewhere or something?" Keith's hand falls to where his bayard is. If there's something coming, there's nothing real they can do against it without their Lions in working condition.

Lance shakes his head, eyes wide. "There's no way that's not a ship. And we'd know if it was one of ours. We need to get _out_ of here." A glance spared back at Red and over to Blue. They're right between them, too far from either to get to cover before whatever's making the sound passes straight over them.

Keith points over to one of the cracks in the glacier walls. If they run, they'll have a chance. "Come on!"

"Do you even know what's in there? You don't! We can't just—"

"It's better than getting caught in the open!" Keith grabs Lance by the hand and sprints to the crevice in the glacier. Split wide enough for both of them to pass through side by side with some difficulty, and too deep to see the back of. If there's anything in there, they can handle it when they get there. Better chances than fighting a Galra ship on foot. Careening through the snow feels like constantly tripping. Keith's heart pounds so fast he can feel it in his throat. His lungs ache with fast breaths. Getting to the rift, they press their backs to the wall as far in as they dare.

"Turn the light on your suit off," Keith hisses. Lance blinks, hesitates, but listens. Keith follows. The only light in the glacier crack comes from the entrance, or what shines through the outermost layer of ice. It's a deep blue, with hints of the prism light from outside catching along the smooth edges of it. Deeper into the cave, though, the darker it is. Outside, the noise is getting closer. It's clearly identifiable as that of a Galra ship, now. Keith summons his bayard one-handed and stands at the ready. Lance backs up closer to the wall, standing very still behind him, reluctantly letting go of Keith's hand.

"If you're using a sword, you're just gonna charge in like a fool and reveal our position," Lance whispers. "Let me take point."

Fair enough. Keith backs up and lets Lance stand closer to the entrance. Lance holds his bayard at the ready; he's gotten better at it over the time they've been part of Voltron, holding it like it's an extension of himself. It's a rare thing, to see him serious. Keith finds it disconcerting, in a context like this.

Time passes. Minutes, maybe, maybe longer. Somewhere between minutes and eons. They don't dare speak for a while, or move, but eventually they're tentatively assuming there's nothing out there. Lance pokes his head out the entrance of the cavern. "Lions are still there."

Why would the ship leave without landing? It was almost certain they saw them. They come to the conclusion at once, and their expressions sink. "They must be going to get reinforcements," Keith mutters. He keeps his bayard at hand.

"Guess that doesn't bode well for the others," Lance says. He sinks to the floor of the cave, leaning back against the wall, looking exhausted. "We can't win, can we?"

"Not against reinforcements." Keith looks outside as well, preferring visual confirmation.

Lance makes a noise that can't quite be called a groan. "I meant in a metaphorical sense."

"We're not dead yet." A deep breath. "Either way. That was a nice catch—I would have thought it was an avalanche and tried to make it back to Red." Lance can be perceptive, when you wouldn't think it. He looks up at the compliment.

"So you finally admit to my superiority! ...Nah, man. I used to listen to the fighter jets flying in and out at the Garrison. Before that, I'd listen to airplanes that went overhead. And I know what our Lions sound like. I think that was just a Galra fighter—no match for us. Especially if they think our Lions aren't broke." He gives a tired smile, but it fades fast, and he eyes the cave warily. "How long do we have to stay here? In the weird ice cave, I mean. I know we're fucked, planet-wise."

"I was thinking while we're here we could investigate," Keith says, getting the sense that Lance isn't going to like that idea. "I don't want to be surprised by anything that could come out of here while we're sitting in our Lions."

"I can't say I like the idea of crawling deeper into Santa's asshole. Can we turn the lights back on? Suit lights, there for a reason. Reason being my sanity." Lance turns the suit light on—as he moves, it catches in the walls of ice and flickers specks of colors throughout. "Dude. If we held a dance in here, it'd be _rad_." He puts away his bayard. "How long do you think this took to form, even?"

"A really long time?" Keith turns his own suit light back on and steps a little further into the cave. There's no snow through here, the ground being flat ice. It's darker than that of the walls around them, and doesn't refract light.

Lance runs a hand along one wall. "We might be the first living things to ever see it. Isn't that messed up?"

"It'd be more messed up if something actually had to live here." Keith looks behind them, making sure they aren't being followed. He would have heard, probably, but—best to be sure. "You know, if you actually trained with your bayard, I bet you'd be an even better shot."

"Wow. That is the most half-assed compliment I've ever heard. I'll take it!" The ice is slippery under their feet. Keith nearly slips, before catching himself by digging his sword into the floor. "I do the normal amount of training, man. Not all of us are trying to, like, become one with the training deck. I'm not sure you don't actually live there. It'd explain a _lot_ if you were secretly one of the gladiators in there."

"We're going to have to be more careful," Keith says, ignoring what was actually said. "We don't know when those reinforcements are going to show up."

"Which is why we should _really_ go back to our Lions. We're double fucked if we're in here flopping around in a creepy cave when our Lions get sucked up and dragged to Zarkon."

Keith gives up and puts his bayard away, throwing his hands up. "Fine! If anything shows up out of the cave and eats our brains, I'm blaming you."

"If they can eat our brains there, why can't they eat our brains in here?"

They look each other in the eye and walk very quickly out of the cave.

\---

"What are we going to do when the reinforcements come? We can't just—I dunno, sit here like ye olde proverbial ducks. We owe it to Blue and Red, at the very least." Lance sits with his bayard near his hip, digging into the ration pack he used as a pillow last night. Keith tries to tear the edge of his own open, but it sticks, and he gives up and uses the tip of his sword to cut it.

"We put up the best fight we can?" Dread clings to the inside of his ribcage. He's been trying to ignore it, but every time he manages to focus, it weighs in his heart to drag him right back down again. He'd been thinking about making things right, earlier, but now that there's time and they've settled down he can't bring himself to gather the words. Lance makes a face—lips pursed, brow furrowed. His mouth looks soft, and Keith tries not to wonder how it'd feel against his own chapped lips. "We don't have very many choices."

"Sucks to be us." It's not a good feeling, to see Lance so far removed from even _faking_ a decent mood. Like some central tenet of the universe has fallen out of line. Keith shakes his head, looks away. "It's my fault you're here, anyways."

"Thought we already went over this?" Lance stretches his legs out. "You already said you disobeyed the return order because you didn't want to let them reach the Castle. It's not like you knew you'd get stuck _here_." How can he be so—not _dense_ , but how can he miss the point like that? Keith sits up. Impatience brews behind his eyes.

"You know what I meant."

"Apparently not! Enlighten me, O ye of many confusing problems."

Is he avoiding the topic on purpose? Did he _forget?_ Keith's shoulders set tense. "You took that shot for me! You got dumped on this planet because you had to play hero!" Guilt burns at the back of his throat. Lance is here because of him. Even if Lance is going to ignore that, or whatever he's doing, _Keith_ isn't. He hasn't let himself forget it since this started.

Lance's eyes widen. He slumps back a little, surprised. After the words leave, something in Keith's lungs feels bottomed-out. "Oh. Yeah. That happened, didn't it? Huh." He takes another spoonful of ration. "Your definition of 'playing hero' is weirdly hypocritical and bullshit, first off. And second," Lance tries to get the words right, "if I wasn't willing to accept the consequences, I wouldn't have done it. Don't start up some kind of angst pain train because of a pre-made decision."

It's a little late for that. Keith scowls. "I had it under control! I could have—"

"You had yourself under fire!"

"We would have lost one Paladin, instead of two, then. And the Lions would have been repairable, I'm sure."

Lance looks a little hollowed-out. "You're one mad, pragmatic bastard, aren't you? Is that really how you think of yourself? Just, like, some kind of pawn to toss out for the sake of the other pieces? 'cause let me tell you, Keith, this isn't a game of chess. For one, I'm _good_ at chess, but two, you can't just—" he lets the words trail off, gesturing weakly with his spoon.

Keith pulls his knees up to his chest. "Lance. In case you forgot, it's not just us at stake. It's the whole _universe_. You can get a new Red Paladin—" Red growls in the back of his mind, but he ignores her, continuing "—but the more of us out, the more the entire mission is at stake, and you can't find a new _universe_. ...You play chess?"

"My uncle is, like, super good at chess. He taught me and I always play it with him whenever he comes over, because he's cool as shit. But," Lance says abruptly, "that is irrelevant, because we were having _words_. Do you think you're the only one allowed to be self-sacrificing?"

"I fucking hate chess," Keith says, because, no, he's definitely trying to change the topic, but also because he's trying to picture Lance leaning over a chessboard pondering a move and he just _can't picture it_.

Lance squints. "Really? I figured you'd like it, considering how you like _throwing yourself at the enemy._ "

"God, no, it's just a bunch of sitting around a board and pretending like you know the rules."

"That's fair. I may have slightly overestimated my skill, anyways. I, uh, haven't ever actually beaten anybody. Except my little brother, but does that _really_ count?' Lance leans up against the wall, legs stretched out, rations forgotten. Silence trails for a second as the tension of the conversation dissipates, before they both make eye contact, and start _laughing_. Both of them. Keith had almost forgotten, before becoming a Paladin, what _this_ was like. Talking to someone beyond passing courtesy. Laughing with them. After the Kerberos mission failure, all the progress he'd made had been demolished. Dropping out, heading out on his own to a shack in the middle of nowhere. Lance, it seems, dragged him kicking and screaming back into the world of society.

Lance continues talking once he manages to get words out without laughing between them. "Holy shit, dude. We're about to die in space, just got done with a super serious conversation, and we're talking about _chess_."

"I'm not talking about chess. _You're_ talking about chess," he says, having just gotten done talking about chess. Keith thinks of the situation, and how unfortunate it is that he's only realizing how much his life has improved while about to lose it.

Lance sticks his leg out to kick Keith in the shin. Not hard. Keith still wants to know why Lance is so calm about having gotten dragged into this mess, but if he's going to let the topic drop, then so be it. "Dude. If our lives were a chess game, Zarkon would be that motherfucker who still has all his pieces while you're left with, like, one pawn and a knight cowering in the corner with your king. Except by some divine miracle you get that one pawn to the other side of the board and get a queen and then you're just tearing the other guy up from the inside of his weird overcomplicated strategy? That's Voltron."

"Don't mention chess to Coran, please," Keith says. "He'll want to play it, and then that disaster will be on your hands."

"Man, don't talk bad on Coran! I like Coran. He's like your cool grandpa who tells old stories but you don't actually mind, and then he gives you, like, weird candy and pulls a coin out from behind your ear."

Keith stares blankly. Lance waits for a response, before apparently striking a realization. "Oh! Oh, _shit_ , man, I'm sorry, I keep talking about family—"

He snorts. Lance stops, looking confused. Keith picks at the last of his rations. "Lance, it's fine. You can mention family around me without me, like, exploding." The rations don't taste any better than yesterday's.

Lance relaxes. "When we get out of this, or, if, whatever, if or when we get out of this, I'm so teaching Coran chess."

"I'm not going to deal with the fallout when you do that and realize you can't beat chess against an alien who's never even heard of it. That or you're going to find out that Alteans have something like Star Trek chess and you're just going to have to live with that." This is nice. There's still the ever-looming threat of their situation, and he can still hear the wind howling outside Red, but—if there's any way to make light of a situation that's probably going to result in their deaths, he thinks they've found it. He tries to hold onto that, make some sort of peace.

Lance squints. "You're, like, pop culture-deficient. And you watch Star Trek?"

"Blame Shiro."

A _gasp_. "I'm just finding out all _kinds_ of stuff about people who I thought weren't losers lately! Who knew being stranded on a planet was the best way to get gossip." Lance pauses, like he's thinking, before continuing. "What made you get kicked out of the Garrison, anyways?"

Keith splutters. " _What?_ Where did _that_ come from?"

A shrug. "Man, you know how my thoughts are—"

"I do not!"

"—Indecipherable, unknowable, like the motives of God? My train of thought is more like a subway system. Nah, actually, I was thinking of, like, Starfleet, right, we were talking about Star Trek? And I thought about how the Garrison is kinda like, weird pre-Starfleet, and I was already thinking of you, and then the two subjects merged, and I've gotta admit, I _am_ kinda curious." Lance's thoughts are, admittedly, pretty tangled at times. He's been known to completely divert conversation topics at time, or to forget the discussion at hand while it's occurring, but—Keith's started to mind less lately, except at times when his nerves were already ragged.

"I prefer to say dropped out," Keith says, folding his arms and propping them up on his knees. "It wasn't really one single thing. I skipped most days after the whole... mess with the Kerberos mission. Even when I did show up I usually didn't do any work, or I'd just—get into fights, I guess. Verbal and physical. After too many of the last kind they got tired of me. I didn't really care, either way." He couldn't much be assed to care, thinking Shiro was dead.

"Dude," Lance says low, breathing in steeply through his teeth. "People at the Garrison just kinda assumed you flew off the handle one day. If I'd known, I'd've stopped talking shit about it. That's rough."

Keith shrugs. "The situation turned out for the better, anyways. Voltron happened. I don't regret it."

"Even when it means you've wound up stuck on this planet with your arch-nemesis?" Lance tries to say it like a joke, but the words come out threadbare. His eyes are half-closed, long lashes cast down. The tone, the look on his face makes resolution build up in Keith's chest—resolved to get them off this planet, to make things right.

"Some regrets about that," Keith says, "but the only one about being stuck here with you is that you had to be here at all."

A long moment. "And I don't regret getting stuck here," Lance says, "so I guess we're even."

Keith looks from Lance's eyes, to Lance's mouth, to the floor. "I guess."

"Speaking of suddenly being slapped in the face by the situation, we should talk about how to deal with those reinforcements that are coming."

They can only relax for so long, really. He's been trying to ignore the feeling of 'last meal' the entire time they've been sitting here eating their rations. Keith fiddles with the hilt of his bayard. "I don't know how we can," he admits, "the Lions aren't in the condition for a fight, unless we want to menacingly walk at them."

"Then we just use what we have." Lance looks around, any trace of prior emotion hidden. "What do we have?"

Not much. "Ourselves, our bayards. Shelter in the Lions. Hiding places within the glaciers. We're in a valley full of weird light refraction—might present a slight visibility advantage. The ability to survive out here for over a week. The weird Altean tools Coran gave me."

"Watch, one of those weird things is gonna be the exact thing we need, and we're not gonna realize it until we're back at the Castle." Lance picks at the edge of his armor's glove. "Okay. We have all that stuff. And the Galra have functional ships, way better weapons, unlimited forces, and an endless desire to kill us."

Lance freezes. Eyes wide, lips parted, looking jolted to the core. Concern rises in Keith's chest, until Lance bolts forward and grabs Keith's shoulders. He's grinning. Keith stares up at him bewildered.

"Keith. Dude. Buddy. Bro, holy shit, _the Galra have functional ships!_ "

"Yes?" He's not seeing how that's anything but a problem. "And they're bringing them _straight to us!_ "

It registers as he's in the middle of a rebuttal. Words falter, and he _grins_. "Lance, that's _brilliant!"_

"I do my best." Lance settles back down, but there's a visible return of energy where before it had been sapped away, and he's still smiling. The ending of proximity simmers in a way Keith can't explain. Hope catches in his lungs for the first time since this began. Behind it, though, he finds he wants to do nothing more than kiss Lance, close the distance between them.

Instead, he tries to bring himself back down from the clouds. "How are we going to get onto one to even use the comms?"

Lance shrugs. "We have weapons! You could just—" a motion like chopping the air "—uh. Wow. I don't know what sound a sword would make."

Keith tilts his head. "They... don't?"

"What? You're kidding me. They totally make that _swoosh_ —"

" _Alright_ , Lance." Okay, no, yeah, Lance can definitely still wear his patience thin at times. Keith thinks of the layout of the landscape outside. Planning isn't his strong suit. "We have an advantage in that we're in a tight valley—"

" _Tight valley,_ huh?"

" _—and a disadvantage_ in that we'll be taking on ships on foot. If you were Zarkon, how many ships would you send out for this?"

A scowl. "Why do _I_ have to be hypothetical Zarkon?"

"Oh my god. Lance—"

"No, I gotcha, I gotcha. As many as possible! We're flippin Voltron!"

"They don't know we're out of commission," Keith says, pinching the bridge of his nose. Frustration builds up behind his eyes. It's getting harder to think—he's wound-up, impatient, has been on edge and stressed since the crash. "They'd want to move in as fast as possible. So, they'd accumulate as many forces as possible without causing delay. We could be up against a lot." He doesn't see any realistic way out of this, unless they're _very_ lucky. And if luck was on their side, they wouldn't be here.

"What if we make them think it's a trap?" Lance scratches the back of his neck. "If they don't know we're on our backs, they've got to be asking why we'd just be... sitting here. We came across that as Voltron, _we'd_ assume it was an ambush."

Keith blinks. Setting up a pretend ambush is a lot more... thought-out, than his own plan of 'charge in and hope they don't die'. This is maybe why he pilots an arm. Lance sounds so unsure of himself, too, even with such a plan as that. He wishes he was able to give praise like Shiro gives it, but words fail him more often than not, especially in admiration. Instead he stands, offering Lance a hand up. "How do we fake an ambush, then?"

Lance pulls himself up. "You're asking me?"

"Well, _yeah_. It was your idea!"

"I don't know," Lance says, looking out the exit of the cave as it opens into the barren landscape outside. "I didn't think I'd get this far."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end notes soapbox time! you can pry my mental image of lance playing (and being bad at) chess from my cold dead hands. i was tempted to name this chapter after some kinda chess move (en passant was my first thought: the move where a pawn can capture an enemy pawn if it takes two steps forward as its first move and it could still have been captured if it had only moved one step, which just kinda FEELS weirdly thematically relevant in terms of the galra-fighting plot here) but then i realized i'm not quite THAT pretentious yet. unfortunately, that statement wasn't researched. i've researched nothing for this fic except g-forces, and that was only because i needed a cause for unconsciousness that didn't involve injury-causing jostling. 
> 
> also... here's the thing. my fool self described all the shiny lights in this fic (they come up a lot more in the next chapter) as a lot more blindingly bright than perhaps they maybe actually would be. i have glasses. very thick glasses. if you shine a light at me i will not be able to see. the environment of this fic was inspired by my morning walk to the bus stop, where my front door casts refracted light right into my fucking eyes and also i turn into an icicle for thirty minutes. anyways, i only realized that most people probably aren't as easily affected by bright lights AFTER i wrote this and... i'm not gonna rewrite several thousand words because the majority of the population has the nerve to have good vision. my bullshit meta excuse is that the atmosphere/environment of an alien planet could have a wonky effect on light refraction? and, as came up in the fic, we don't exactly know what's IN all this ice
> 
> a bit more of my fool self's meta rambling: logically, an outer rim planet around a yellow star would be a LOT colder than represented in this fic. the sun is a yellow star and pluto is an outer rim planet. pluto is cold as dicks. i played fast and loose with temperature because 1) i'm literally probably the only one here who cares 2) i needed it to be as such. also, g-force induced loss of consciousness (g-loc! as referenced in chapter one) also sometimes causes a type of bruising called GEASLES (g-measles!) which is a very delightful name for the concept of capillaries bursting under pressure. this is not referenced at all, despite my utter delight at the name geasles, because of those same two aforementioned clauses.
> 
> there's an abandoned plot line here where i'm sure you saw where it was, like, plot-ectomied. i meant to have the cave system be... relevant, you know, or something, but it would have ruined the pacing of this chapter even more than i already did. i could have fixed the pacing, but... like... i'm not getting paid for this. it bothers me that i wrote them eating right after the tension of OH GOD WE MIGHT DIE but yknow what......... if i was boutta die i'd grab a bite to eat first too
> 
> on a more personal note here, re: keith bringing up why he dropped out of the garrison. i dropped out of school too (although i've since gone back, to an alternative school) and it's REALLY nice to have a character similar to me, and in that regard as well. as for the line about people getting awkward around you whenever family comes up... i feel that one a lot too. i only mention this so yknow those bits aren't just me pulling shit out my ass
> 
> i was going to be anxious about posting this but i submitted an original short story to a real actual literary magazine for Literally The First Time Ever last night , so... posting this? not so bad, comparatively. still, feedback is always mega appreciated


	3. out from the cold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shit finally stops hitting the fan, and also it finally Gets Gay

Footprints are a problem. While the fresh snowfall last night was a boon in that it covered the edges of the craters in which the Lions landed, it also shows a map of every path they take. The solution is something that Keith never thought would be quite this helpful; it's also spectacularly inane.

"None of you can ever get annoyed by my pacing again," Lance calls, going out of his way to trample as much of the snow down as possible as he walks. "You know what? That first grade teacher who always got me in trouble for being hyperactive? She can fight me too! She's _basically_ worse than the Galra. Cordial invitation to Asskick Valley, situated on top of Asskick Planet!"

Lance has been rambling this entire time. Any other time, it might have begun to get on his nerves, but in light of the situation it's actually helping keep Keith grounded. He suspects, after many months of evidence especially concentrated in the past day or so, that talking out of one's ass is a coping mechanism for Lance.

There's not actually much Keith can think of to do, and he _hates_ it. Hates sitting here and waiting. With a weight in his chest—the Galra could come at any time, and he still hasn't said a word to Lance, about anything. He'd wanted to make things right, get an answer, before whatever happens in the fight coming up on them like storm clouds on the horizon. But it's so much easier to _not_ say anything, and frankly, although it'd be a good summary of his life, it would _suck_ if his last social experience before dying in a total anticlimax ended up being _rejection_.

So he keeps his mouth shut.

"We're going to have to hide in the glacier holes again, aren't we?" Lance says, halfway to the Blue Lion. "The ice buttcracks. Whatever."

"I was thinking you could stay inside the Lion and provide cover fire as I fight outside." There's a tension pulling at the air, tight and uncomfortable—even though neither of them are saying anything about it, Keith knows Lance must feel it too. He speaks of lighter things, but his eyes have gone dark, any smile forced. Similar tension precedes any of their battles, but it's different now, with just the two of them against such high stakes.

Lance stops pacing. "Are you kidding me? I'm not going to back myself into a corner playing peek-a-boo with guns! That'll be the first place they look. If we hit them carefully from where they can't see us, how are they gonna fight back?"

"Guerilla warfare. What you are suggesting is literally guerilla warfare."

"You say that like it's a bad thing." Lance takes a cautious look up at the sky. "I don't think we've got much time left before they show up. You got any bright ideas before we enter the ring?"

Bright ideas. Keith scours his mind for anything that could be useful. The Lions are down, all systems out except (he thinks back to Red talking back to him yesterday) lights. Lights—

"Shit," he breathes. "The ice!"

Lance stares at him. "...Yeah? There sure is a lot of it. Maybe even, like, three ice. Three singular units of ice on this planet."

Keith waves an arm out, gesturing around them. "No, _look_. The prism effect—it already kind of hurts your eyes, right? Along with the light hitting the snow? _The Lions have lights_."

A whistle. "Okay! Literally a bright idea! I could k—" Lance stops, going silent.

Keith tilts his head. "You could what?"

"Nope. Nevermind. You had a bright idea, I had a very _dull_ idea."

There's the stalagmites in the valley, some of them reaching what must be beyond twenty feet tall, or the glacial valley walls. The Blue Lion, who crashed harder, is already sitting facing the wall of the valley. Red looks into the distance between the two of them. Keith points, bayard clenched tight in his other hand. "Go tell Blue to be prepared to light it up."

Lance gives him a mock salute before heading off on his way. Keith takes a deep breath, the climate's air still feeling cold and sharp in his lungs, before turning away and heading towards Red. She isn't very far—when he gets there, he sets a hand on her paw, looking up. There's a feeling in the back of his mind like a tangible _pull._ An insistence. The Red Lion does not want to lose another paladin.

"Sorry, Red," Keith mutters. Thinks over the plan—she accepts the idea, but only barely. She hates this sort of forced inaction more than anything else. He gets it. He _does_. "Maybe we'll get lucky this time."

A response like a _roar_ only he can hear. He laughs a little, humorless, before turning around and heading towards the cave entrance where he and Lance had agreed to meet up.

They're either going to pull this off, or they won't—simple as that. Keith can accept that. He accepted it before the mission failed, staring through his viewscreen at the Galra ships that had him locked down. What is _unacceptable_ , guilt weighing like stones on his chest, is having gotten Lance tangled into it. He slumps back against the wall, turning his suit light off, looking up at the arched ceiling of the cave. It catches some of the light from outside, almost looking like stained glass. His bayard feels heavy in his hands. Maybe, eventually, the paladins back at the Castle will forgive him for this mess.

Lance appears after a few minutes, leaning briefly on the edge of the entrance before stepping in. He stands opposite Keith, shifting his weight between his feet. "I think we really fucked this one up this time," he says, eyes averted.

"You think?" Keith's heart is pounding doubletime in his chest. He wonders what traces of his nerves Lance must be able to see. If he doesn't say something now, he might never get a chance. Never get a chance—he's not sure, whatever's about to happen, if he can do it with any secrets left in the air.

"I would have liked one more _goddamn_ pizza before I kicked the bucket," Lance says with a breathy laugh, looking up from the ground. Something lost in his eyes that shouldn't have to be there at all.

Keith shakes his head. "We're not dead yet."

Lance opens his mouth for a rebuttal, but the sonic sound of Galra ships decelerating into orbit a ways off shuts it off. "Got any fancy last words?"

Last words—electric desperation, impulse, pulses through his mind. Keith feels like his heart's dropped to the ground, something red-hot in his chest seeping through the rest of his body. The first step forward is the hardest. Before he can think about what he's doing, his free hand is on Lance's shoulder, his lips pressed to Lance's.

It's not perfect. It's not how he's imagined it. Their teeth clack together with the force of the motion forward and without looking Keith is pretty sure Lance still has his eyes open. Both of their faces are cold, and even with their visors down their helmets make it awkward. Lance stands there frozen, unresponsive, and Keith is about to pull away when Lance _melts_ , hands managing to make their way to Keith's hips.

When Keith pulls away, heart feeling as if it's about to explode, Lance is _staring_ at him. "What the _hell_ was that?"

"Famous last words," Keith says, simply, breathless. He hasn't forgotten the roar of the ships getting closer, but—this is something that had to be done. He hopes that he isn't misreading the situation. "If you don't—then that's fine, but—well, I do."

Lance splutters. "Do _what_?"

"Like you."

Wide eyes. "What, like, _like_ like?"

"I just kissed you, Lance."

"You couldn't have said this _before_ we were about to die like idiots? I would have liked to, like, get some time to do something about this!" Lance gestures rapidly with his free hand. Keith has _no idea_ what to make of this response. Between the panic coming to a climax in what feels like every system of his body, and the fear of—this—backfiring on him, it feels like his brain might short-circuit.

Lance's lips back on his startle him, but before he can do anything, Lance has pulled away, leaving a feeling like something simmering on his skin. Keith's mind feels worn raw. "You better not die on me, Kogane," Lance mutters, impatient. Eye contact lingering, before Lance turns away, hoisting his bayard up and peering out towards the exit of the cave. "They haven't landed yet. Get behind me—you won't be able to do anything from here, with your sword."

"Great," Keith says, following the instruction, wondering if that meant what he thinks it did. "No, yeah, this is fine." There's no cover here, except for the hiding place provided by the cave. They had debated setting up _something_ , but decided it would reveal their position too easily. "What can you see?"

Roar of ships overhead nearly drowns out Lance's whispered response. Keith puts his visor back down to activate the helmet comms, hoping Lance takes the hint. "There's three down here, I think—and a larger one in the atmosphere." Pressure from a ship descending pops his ears.

Without warning, the Lions take their cues. The valley fills with blinding prismatic light, dancing across the edges of the glaciers and across the snow. It stings in Keith's eyes until his visor automatically darkens. The ice makes whatever light it catches many times brighter. The snow goes from white to awash with colors, catching in the tracks. He's glad he's not piloting in this. The ground shakes beneath them, walls of the glacier creaking and groaning, as something seems to land—above them? He can't quite place it. If he takes a chance and cranes his head, he can see a second ship touching down on the top of the cliff on the opposite side of the valley. Where's the third ship?

Something above them makes a piercing screech, like crumpling metal against—ice? A collision that sends his ribcage vibrating. Shadow falls in front of the entrance of the cave—on instinct Keith grabs Lance by the elbows to retreat backwards into the cave.

"What the hell is _that_?" Lance hisses, as ice and crumpled metal fall to the ground a short ways from the entrance. "Something crashed." Once the dust clears, a little more light is gone, and one of the tallest of the ice pillars is demolished—at the base of it lies a Galra fighter with the undercarriage jagged and torn, but intact enough. If they're lucky as they have been so far, the comms will still be working.

Keith grins, the first real hope for victory airy in his chest even as his heart beats too-fast. "There's your ship. How are you going to get to it?"

"Do I look like a miracleworker?"

The cockpit opens up, and a Galra drone pilot stumbles out into the melting snow, pistol in hand. Keith has to resist the urge to sprint out there with his bayard. Lance lines up his gun along the target, lingering to aim, before he takes the shot. The drone topples backwards, robotic parts scattering across the ground.

"We've revealed our position."

"Worth it. Could have fired back." Hammers striking ice above silence Keith before he can say more. Lance gestures up with a nod, aiming his bayard toward the ship perched on the opposite side of the valley. "Dudes above us are rappelling down. Guess they joined rock-climbing club."

"I've got this one," Keith says, grip readjusting on his bayard. _Finally_ he can do something. "Run for the fighter. I'll cover you."

"You know they have _guns_ , right? Like, a lot of guns!"

How observant. Keith shakes his head. "Just go."

Lance gives him a look, before sprinting out, keeping his head down. Keith darts out behind him, making sure he gets a head start. He turns on his armor's jetpack, dodging the fire of the drones rappelling down the cliff face. They're inaccurate, poorly-aimed, firing with the hand that isn't on their rappel cord. Keith flies along the edge of the glacier, bayard outstretched—shots come close, but none hit. The bayard is sharp enough to cut easy through the ropes. One by one the drones fall to the ground, disabled on impact.

Keith takes a moment to survey the area—one ship on the opposite side of the valley still, parallel to the one from which the drones had just come. If he looks up, he can see a _much_ larger ship hovering in the atmosphere, casting shadows over where the light of the valley doesn't reach. Must be how they intend to take the Lions. He's not going to let that happen. Red is struggling to put her shields up, particle barrier flickering more off than on—Blue is completely out, except her lights. Lance is three quarters of the way to the fighter wreckage.

Searing pain spiking through his arm. He almost drops his bayard to grab his arm before gathering himself and turning around. Lucky shot—a drone is standing a few steps away from the ship on the cliff behind him. He darts out of the way of a second hit, diving for the cliff to drive his sword through what would be the drone's torso. The armor took most of the hit on his arm—it hurts like a graze would, burning like hell but doubtedly consequential. Shots ring out from the other end of the valley. Keith descends back to the ground, sprinting to cover in the wreckage of the fighter.

"You got any idea how to work this thing?" Lance calls, taking cover behind the metal wall of the cockpit. He's got his gun propped up on the wall, firing upwards at the ship perched on the cliff. It's larger than the one which had dropped off the crew rappelling down the glacier, and Keith is sure they don't want to engage it more than necessary.

"We just have to press buttons until the comms work!"

"I'm a bit _busy_ —" Lance ducks way down, dodging a shot that comes too close. Keith bites his lip past the pain in his arm, peering over the controls. Trying to think of where he'd put the comms if he happened to be whatever engineer who built this ship.

A creaking noise, coupled with one like static. Both of them look up—there's two tractor beams coming from the ship hanging in the atmosphere, over the Lions. "Fuck!"

"Are you _hurrying!"_ Lance starts firing blind, still not risking putting his head over the line of cover. Keith slams down on a random button. An image pops up on the viewscreen—a Galra commander on the bridge of an unrecognized ship, who looks _very_ surprised. Keith panics and punches the button down again as Lance yelps. "Turn that off! Turn that _off!_ "

"It's off!" The viewscreen flickers out of sight. Keith takes a deep breath. "I got hit, but I'm good!"

"You got _what!_ How are you good!" Lance's head snaps to face him, a gap in his firing.

"I'm great! Just a graze! Keep firing!" He presses another button, panicking. An avalanche of tools falls from a compartment to his left. Another button—weirdly-shaped oxygen masks fall from the ceiling. This is _not good_. Keith stares, frantic, out the cockpit, catching sight of the Blue Lion being pulled up slowly by the tractor beam. Lance makes a shot, and a Galra drone falls off the side of the cliff. None of these buttons make any _sense_.

A red light starts flashing on the instrument panel next to a switch by the control column. Out of desperation, he flicks it.

_"—think that could be them? Galra ships flocking to the planet on the outer rim of the solar system. No activity was on that planet before we fled."_ Pidge's voice. That is Pidge's voice coming through (if slightly garbled) over the comms. Keith nearly sinks to the floor of the cockpit in relief. Lance immediately lowers his bayard, eyes wide behind his visor.

_"They're not exactly known for staying out of trouble—why are we picking up a Galra fighter-class comms signal from the planet's surface?"_ That's Hunk.

Lance ducks out from his cover and nearly shoves Keith out of the way to get to the comms, smacking Keith's shoulder in excitement. "Hey, buddy, didn't anybody ever tell you not to shit-talk the dying?"

Excited shouting erupts on the other end of the signal. Keith feels like there's been something incomprehensibly heavy tugged off his shoulders, and he can't help but grin. Lance is absolutely beaming. _"Lance! It's good to hear you, man, we kinda assumed you were—wait. Please tell me you're not actually literally dying."_

"We're fine, Hunk. Can you tell us your position?" Keith exhales deeply. Lance lets out a shaky laugh, elated. "Keith totally got shot."

_"He_ what?" That'd be Shiro.

Keith grimaces. "It's just a _graze!" "_

_We'll see about that."_

_"We're just outside the Castle. Back in your system."_ Pidge. The sound of her pressing buttons comes through just barely over the signal. _"Look, you've got Galra warships encroaching on your position—"_

"You _think_?" Lance says, kneeling lower to the floor of the cockpit after a lucky shot from outside nearly grazes his back.

_"No, jackass, I've never had a thought in my entire life. And you won't have one again, if those ships reach you. We're on our way to your position."_

"Assuming he had thoughts before," Keith mumbles, nervously glancing out the cockpit. The Lions are still caught in the tractor beams, but they're going up slowly. "Look—there's a warship above us with our Lions in its tractor beams. You've gotta get here as soon as possible. We have good cover, we can hold out."

"We can?" Lance says, sounding genuinely surprised. Keith elbows him in the side.

_"Roger. Stay in that cover. We'll be over to get them off your backs in a moment. And try not to get shot any more?"_ It's good to hear Shiro again. If there's anyone that can make it feel like they can get through this fine, it's him. And spending a day wondering if he had lost him again had been—so _much_. Too much. It's good to hear _all_ of them again, but....

"Oh, good. Great. Yeah, we'll just sit here and get shot at while our Lions are stolen." The visibility advantage is gone, now that there's less light coursing through the valley. Lance doesn't dare risk going above cover to aim properly now that the drones on the clifftop can probably see him. Keith feels his ears pop again as another drone ship drops into the atmosphere. There's not much he can do from here, with his sword. Would it be too risky, to dive out of the cockpit and try and target the ship that just landed? "Lance. What can you see of that drone ship that just passed? Did you catch where it landed?"

"No. No way. You're not going out there. Did you not hear what Shiro _just said_? Oh my god." Lance glares at him, incredulous. Keith doesn't take his eyes off the Lions. He can feel _rage_ radiating off Red, like a pressure building up in his chest and fists. It's not an unfamiliar feeling, in his own experience. He wonders what Lance must be getting from Blue.

Above them, the sound of weapons firing. Buzz of a particle barrier taking hits, but then it cuts out and gives way to that of metal under heavy stress, and then to—explosions. He can hear the Castle's engines, if he tries, and he grins. Looks like they've lucked out after all. A distorted blur flies by the top of the cliff where the second drone ship is perched. Faster almost than he can see, the ship is struck down as if by an invisible paw.

"Pidge is here," he calls to Lance. Lance pumps his fist in the air, hollering.

_"You two are_ so _lucky. What would you have done if we'd been in the middle of lunch when you hailed us? I think I would have just kept eating and savored the peace and quiet."_ She sounds more stressed than her words let on. Keith wonders if she's gotten any sleep in the past day or so.

_"_ _They didn't hail us...? We sent out the signal sweep trying to find them?"_

_"_ _Hunk. Stop giving me away. I have a cold and unaffected exterior to maintain."_

Keith missed this—this sort of banter, casual camaraderie—more than he knows how to put into words. Now that he knows everybody else is safe, or at least as safe as they can be, there's an airborne feeling in his chest where before there was the weight of concern. He watches as the tractor beams cut out, sending the Red and Blue Lions careening through the air—only for them to be caught mid-fall by the Black and Yellow Lions.

"Thanks, guys." His arm is starting to take up more of his attention, now that the initial rush of adrenaline is beginning to fade. The fight's not over yet, but the _dread_ is gone. He wouldn't have thought they could actually really win this.

Lance jostles him. "Uh, we might have a problem."

Keith looks up. "Huh?"

"Hello, blown-up Galra warship in the atmosphere? Gravity exists? I don't intend to survive this crap only to get crushed by a Galra toilet seat fixture."

_"Do the Galra even use toilets?"_ Pidge's voice.

There's silence over the comms for a moment, before Hunk chimes in. _"I mean, they've got to use_ something. _...Right?_ "

Lance squints. "Shiro, do the Galra—"

_"_ _You'd be surprised."_

Shimmering as the Green Lion's cloaking effect ends, and Pidge lands by the wreckage of the fighter plane. _"Get in, you morons."_

Instinctively, Keith grabs Lance by the hand to guide him through the mangled wreck. After hopping out of the cockpit they rush to the lowered ramp. Most of the snow beneath their feet is melted. "Why are we morons?" Lance yells.

"I don't know! You tell me how you wound up _stranded_ on some—weird snowball planet!" The moment they're on board, Pidge raises the ramp and grabs the control column, taking off into the atmosphere.

Lance lets goes of Keith's hand only to put it on his shoulder, bracing himself for standing during liftoff. "Hey! Ask Keith, I didn't do anything!"

"I think I preferred it when you all were mad at me for getting shot," he mutters, watching the ground fall away beneath them. He's never been so glad to get off a planet before. As they rise, the airborne wreckage of the Galra warship starts crumbling, falling in pieces into the valley below. Keith ignores his frayed nerves and puts away his bayard.

Lance follows suit, raising the visor on his helmet. "We're going to have to look at that in the infirmary, you know." Concern underlines his voice.

"We're not out of the woods yet," Pidge mumbles. "Zarkon had a little more waiting for you than just a few ships full of drones. It seemed like they were all holding back on the surface, though? What bits me and Hunk unencrypted made it look like they thought you were setting up a really crappy and obvious ambush."

Lance shakes Keith's shoulder, waggling his eyebrows. Keith can't find it in himself to be annoyed. "Shiro, Hunk. What are your positions?"

_"Approaching Castle now. We're within range enough that the Castle can draw in the damaged Lions on its own_. _Allura and Coran are going to ready a wormhole as soon as the Green Lion lands in the hangar."_ Shiro sounds relieved, like some tension is gone from his voice that Keith hadn't noticed before. Pidge nods. "Gotcha."

Keith lets his eyes wander around Green's cockpit before turning to face Lance. They're exiting the planet's atmosphere now, no need to brace themselves. Lance looks at him, a little breathless, something ocean-deep in his eyes. Brimming with excitement. In contrast, if Keith looks under his own relief, he finds that he's just _exhausted_.

"I can't believe that worked," Keith says, because he doesn't know what else to say.

Lance grins. "I told you optimism wasn't a bad idea." Unspoken words start to well up between them—Keith remembers kissing Lance, back in the ice cave, and the tips of his ears go hot. He's definitely about to deal with the fallout of that soon, for better or for worse. But—it doesn't seem like Lance minds? Keith's heart won't come down from beating too-fast in his chest.

"Looks like Lance was right about something. Pidge, do you have the record books ready?"

Before any response can come, Lance pulls Keith closer by the shoulder, throwing his arms around him. Face buried in the crook of his neck. The hold is tight, though not warm, the surface of the armor still retaining the chill from planetside. Keith doesn't know what to do with his arms for a moment, taken aback, but after a few breaths pass he puts his arms around Lance's waist.

"Dude. We're _alive_ ," Lance breathes. "I really wasn't expecting that one."

Keith wants to kiss him, to say something that would be of use, but isn't sure where the line is and if he's allowed to toe it. They're in Pidge's Lion, either way—no need to make a scene. He claps Lance on the back. Words are easy-failing things. There's a lot on the tip of his tongue, but he can't bring himself to say any of it, so he stays silent.

"Uh, guys? This is Green, not the sap train." Pidge doesn't sound nearly as annoyed as what she says. Keith suspects she's smiling. Lance's hold on him tightens for just a second before he pulls away, and when he looks up, it's like nothing just happened. Smug grin, traces of his typical demeanor. Lance's ability to shift outwardly between moods is... something.

The Green Lion touches down in its hangar, and all hell breaks loose. The moment the ramp is lowered and the three of them walk down (well—Pidge jumps and uses her jetpack off the side, to really land those few feet in style), they're met by the rest of the team. Hunk buries them both in a tight hug, nearly lifting them off the ground, and this time Keith doesn't even hesitate before returning it. "You guys are alive!"

"So I've noticed," Lance says, a little strained past the hug, "all thanks to my endless wit!"

Hunk lets go of them but keeps one hand on Lance's shoulder. "No. Like, dude, literally, we thought you were dead. Or dying. We saw what happened after the mission."

"If you guys hadn't come when you did, we probably would be." Keith looks around, meets Shiro's eyes. He's smiling, but Keith knows him well enough to see the traces of stress on his face. They've been gone just over a day and a half, roughly—knowing him, he hasn't rested since before the mission.

Shiro puts a hand on his shoulder. "Give yourselves some credit. You did the best you could, given the situation." The smile fades. "And what's this I hear about you getting _shot?"_

"Grazed! I got _grazed!_ I'll be fine, Shiro." It's nice, to be worried about sometimes. But it's not even severe enough for a healing pod.

Shiro shakes his head. "Sorry if I don't trust your word on that. Let me take you down to sickbay—"

"I can do it!" Lance rushes. Everyone glances at him, and he rubs the back of his neck. "I mean. Me and Tough Guy over here have unfinished business."

_"Unfinished business?"_ Pidge digs, waggling her eyebrows like she knows exactly what's happened. Keith wouldn't be particularly surprised.

Lance nods primly, a hand on his hip. "Yep! I need to kick Keith's butt over the Easy Cheese debate from the other day. We can't just _leave that in the past."_

Everybody else groans or looks generally exhausted. Pidge looks unconvinced. Shiro squeezes Keith's shoulder before stepping away. "Alright, Lance. Just hold out a little longer on killing each other?"

Lance stays close to his side during the walk to sickbay, but doesn't say anything. When they get there, Lance closes the door behind them, tosses his helmet onto a counter, and presses Keith up against the wall by his shoulders.

"Can I kiss you?" Lance breathes. Something frantic behind his eyes. Keith doesn't want to look away from them. He nods. Instantly Lance closes the distance between them—lips still cold from being planetside, but soft, and his hands tighten on Keith's shoulders. The rush of it mingles with the leftover whirlwind of adrenaline to create something that feels like flying. When Lance pulls away, Keith still feels where his touch was. He reaches up to pull his own helmet off. Lance smiles—genuine, and it turns into a laugh. "We could have died. Oh my god—we so could have died! We could have died, and here I am...."

"I take it you don't want to settle the Easy Cheese debate," Keith says dryly.

Lance lets his hands fall away from Keith's shoulders, running a hand through his own hair. "Sheesh, no. That was just so they wouldn't interrogate us. Although I bet your ass Pidge caught on, did you see her _face?"_

"Why are you betting _my_ ass?" Keith goes to sit down on one of the sickbay beds because he's not so sure of his knees right now, and starts pulling off the armor from his injured arm.

Lance makes a face. "Because it's valuable, _duh."_ Keith throws part of the armor gauntlet at him. Not hard. Lance ducks past it, grinning, and goes to pick it up. Sets it on the counter beside their helmets before going over to sit on the other end of the bed. "Just to be clear—you like me."

Keith blinks. "Yes."

" _Like_ like."

Was that... not made clear earlier? Is kissing someone before the heat of battle not clear enough? No, this is probably just Lance. "Lance."

Lance puts his hands up, smirking. "Hey, man. I need this kinda stuff in triplicate." A shaky breath—Keith can't tell if Lance is _hesitant_ for once, or just coming down from the heights of the fight. "How's that arm of yours?"

"Huh?" Oh. Yeah. He got shot. It doesn't hurt all that bad, the armor having taken most of it. He looks down at it, a light burn, resisting the urge to prod at it. "Oh. That—I can get it myself."

A scoff. "Holy crap, Keith. You're really serious about keeping up this 'lone wolf' stuff, aren't you?"

"Uh."

Lance pulls a roll of bandages out of a box on the counter, leaning partway off the examination bed to reach. "All this stuff about _this burn isn't that bad_ and _let me risk my own ass like an idiot?_ Not cool, man. Because let me tell you something: lone wolves? They die alone, Keith."

Keith's shoulders set tense. He almost replies off the bat, mouth opening and closing. _Thinks_ about it. If he didn't have his team, where would he be? Stuck on that planet, still, alone. If Lance hadn't crashed with him, he'd probably have stayed stranded there—or gotten himself killed charging into the fight. "Wow. That's really dramatic for a guy who just said ' _like_ like'."

The tension breaks when Lance grins. He rustles through a cabinet looking for a (rather dubious) cream. "Yeah, well. I have moments!" Squinting as he opens the jar of cream. "Will I be the first to say that I don't trust Altean first aid?"

"I think an Altean was the first." It's good that they have these supplies, confusing as they may be at times. Keith doesn't want to rely on the healing pods—not after what happened with Lance when the Castle was invaded. Having backups is reassuring, never mind that it comes in handy for things not severe enough for the pods.

"Well, yeah, but why would they say _Altean_ first aid? They'd just call it first aid! We're possibly the first to say we don't trust _Altean_ first aid specifically!" Lance sets the bandages and cream on the space on the exam bed between them. "Alright. This cream stuff is either the stuff Coran mentioned the other day when he was showing us these things, or it's... I dunno, super glue. So it's either good or it's bad."

Keith pokes it. He doesn't pick up that Lance is joking. "You can use super glue for first aid."

"What." Lance stares at him. "Oh my god, Keith. Please tell me you're not speaking from personal experience."

Keith holds his gaze until Lance looks away, throwing his arms in the air. "Great! I caught emotions for a guy who's freaking... I don't even know!"

He shrugs and grabs the cream, sniffing it before tentatively applying it to the burn. It hurts like flame for a split second, before the whole area goes numb. "Got to admit, this is better than super glue."

"I'll get the bandages," Lance says, exasperated. His touch is surprisingly tender—Keith finds something in himself melting a little, despite himself, until Lance ruins the mood. "Want me to kiss it better?"

"Ugh." Once the bandages are secure, he hops off the bed. He's stuck somewhere between exhaustion and feeling wired-up, like they're still in imminent danger, but then—that's just normal for him, after a battle. It's lined with relief, though, and something warmer. "Hey. I didn't thank you for saving my life back there. Multiple times."

"What, like you needed to?" Lance follows him to the door.

Keith stops both of them before they make it to the hallway, hesitating before putting a hand on Lance's shoulder. "Yeah." He squeezes Lance's shoulder, not entirely sure what to do with himself now, for all the time he's spent thinking of touching Lance. "I'm going to go to my bunk, lay down with the heater cranked up, and sleep for eighteen hours. You can come with, if you want, and if you can stay still long enough to share a bed." He offers on impulse, as he seems to do most things, lately, and because he's so worn-down that frankly, anything sounds like a good idea.

Lance grins. "Sounds like a plan."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's all folks
> 
> this is the longest thing i've ever written and finished, and it's not exactly stellar (well. figuratively stellar. it's in space, so it's literally stellar) but i'm kind of not actively disliking it
> 
> hope i didn't do nobody no injustice in the comms chatter. i'm inexperienced with ensemble casts. i also hope the pacing was at the proper cadence for a fight scene, and that everything made sense/didn't come off as stupid. if it did come off as stupid, well, like fic like author, and also it's not like i'm getting paid to take this 19k dump
> 
> also: super glue CAN be used as first aid. learned this from a guy in my english class recounting the story of how he got stabbed. is it recommended? no. is it possible? yes. don't say i never did nothin for ya
> 
> as always, feedback is ALWAYS appreciated

**Author's Note:**

> i'll put up the next chapter (which is finished, but not exactly reviewed, right now) tomorrow probably
> 
> lance is mega hard to write for me, honestly. i relate to keith a lot, so he's easier to manage for me, i guess? i hope i didn't do lance a disservice in this
> 
> hit me up on my writing sideblog at improperstory.tumblr.com if you want i guess
> 
> feedback is mega appreciated and i'll probably cry


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